Fourteen years after 9/11, is it still too soon to set a movie at the original World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, even one that takes place in 1974? Much to my delight, “The Walk’’ manages to walk this very tricky tightrope with respect to the thousands who died there.

The trailers for this film suggested a realistic thriller about how aerialist Philippe Petit and his confederates managed to sneak past lax security so he could stage his iconic walk between the roofs of the towers. But the actual film immediately strikes a semi-fantasy tone, with Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) delivering narration from the torch of the Statue of Liberty, as golden light bathes the Twin Towers in the background.

Director Robert Zemeckis and his co-screenwriter, Christopher Browne, work a lot of comedy into scenes about Petit’s plot to smuggle a ton of equipment past security, which makes them far easier to take in light of events decades later.

The Twin Towers are re-created using computer-generated imagery, but Zemeckis wisely eschews the kind of razor-sharp, photo-realistic depiction of the walk and the crowds below that would make many people who remember 9/11 uncomfortable. Instead, we get a more soothing look that’s stylized and dreamy (but will still induce vertigo in viewers with fear of heights, especially at the 3-D IMAX screenings).

A key question for me was how “The Walk’’ was going to address 9/11. The nonspoiler answer is that Zemeckis finds a subtle but highly effective way to do this that brought tears to my eyes. (Don’t read further if you want to be surprised.)

In the final scene, Gordon-Levitt’s Petit relates to the camera that after his historic walk, he was given a pass to the World Trade Center’s observation deck. The expiration date, he says, was crossed off — and the official who gave it to him wrote in “forever.’’ To me, that says it all.